News: Tagged as FF Milo

Fans of e-bikes are a growing and devoted group. A publication aimed at these readers presents an opportunity to implement a typeface with a unique voice. When ElektroBIKE – a new German magazine – launched in 2011, it choose FF Milo and FF Milo Serif for its audience.

The magazine’s art directors haven’t fallen back on stock trends with their typography (like ‘sans for headlines, serif for text’). While most of the body text of the magazine’s articles are set in FF Milo Serif, the sans serif FF Milo family is used for much of the additional editorial information. Many of the magazine’s headlines – including most of the very large ones – are also seriffed. Both of the FF Milo families are really more like cousins than separate designs. They are both text faces, too, especially the FF Milo Regular and FF Milo Serif Regular fonts.

Since ElektroBIKE keeps its headlines ‘in the family’, their pages rely on the full range of FF Milo and FF Milo Serif fonts. Including 30 weights in all, these two families make use of true italics, instead of obliques. FF Milo Serif Extra Bold Italic and Black Italic are both used in particular to set many of the magazine’s more dynamic headlines. When these heavier fonts are used, the high contrast between the letters’ thick and thin strokes creates a great effect.

Just like most text faces in the FontFont library, FF Milo and FF Milo Serif include numerous figure styles. In the article pictured above, FF Milo’s oldstyle figures are used not just to add structure a list, but to give it visual power, too.

Almost all of ElektroBIKE magazine relies on FF Milo and FF Milo Serif. Flipping through the magazine, you only consciously notice other typefaces when stumbling across advertisement pages. The magazine’s nameplate is in a different typeface: Monotype's Neo Tech. This choice sets it apart from the text and headlines, and perhaps was made because of the technical – or electronic – nature of the subject matter.

We were pleased to see how ElektroBIKE implemented FF Milo Serif’s typographic features, too. The typefaces include several discretionary ligatures that may be accessed through OpenType. In the images above, you can see c-k and s-t ligatures in the ‘Packliste’ headline (packing list, in German), as well as a t-i ligature in ‘Südtirol’ (South Tyrol). None of these ligatures are linguistic or typographic requirements, but art directors know what sort of accent they can lend to large text.

The award-winning FF Milo and FF Milo Serif typefaces were designed by Mike Abbink and Paul van der Laan. The FF Milo family includes nine weights, ranging from Thin to Black, while FF Milo Serif is available in six weights, from Regular to Black.

Typographic diversity – A new era for web design

BERLIN, GERMANY, February 2010

A more diverse and beautiful web is about to unfold. The latest release of the FontFont® typeface library marks the beginning of a new era for typography – FSI FontShop® International is introducing the first ever stand-alone FontFonts for the web. Finally web designers can use professional typefaces for their projects without relying on system fonts or webfont services. This long-awaited step enables a more seamless and effective transition from print design to the web. More than 30 of the most successful FontFont families are available now as Web FontFonts, including FF DIN®, FF Meta®, FF Dax®, and FF Kievit®. More will follow soon.

BERLIN, GERMANY, April 2009 — FSI FontShop International announced the latest additions to its award-winning FontFont® typeface library.

The new FontFonts

FF Dingbats 2.0 OT — The original FF Dingbats font package was designed in 1993 when there was no other symbol font available except Zapf Dingbats. The FF Dingbats package was the first with some 800 symbols and icons from the world of modern communication: faxes, ISDN, disks, keyboards … all absolutely usable. But over the following years times have been changing and quite a lot of pictograms for office communication are no longer needed – no-one uses floppy disks nowadays – or simply changed their appearance, so Johannes Erler and Henning Skibbe started a complete redesign two years ago.

All pictograms have now been revised and adjusted according to the current stylistic vocabulary. Arrow and number fonts have been reworked and extended as well. All symbols have been sorted into clear categories, and the font “Strong Forms” includes the most needed symbols in a bolder version. Besides this, many symbols can be layered and coloured via an easy-to-use layering feature (see FF Dingbats 2.0 info guide PDF). All this makes FF Dingbats 2.0 a state-of-the-art font package again and probably the largest collection of contemporary symbols and icons for office communication.

FF Milo® was started in 2000 with the goal of a compact typeface with very low ascenders and descenders. Because of its compact design FF Milo is a workhorse typeface suitable for magazine and newspaper typography. It has modern bones with a touch of detail for distinction (especially in the italics). The name Milo is from a resilient grain and that's why the designer chose this name for the typeface. He wanted it to be a basic usable font like corn or grain is to any culture.

With the help of Paul van der Laan for kerning, spacing and production, Michael Abbink developed FF Milo Serifas a companion to the Sans, but it is also perfectly suitable as a stand alone typeface or used together with any other sans serif typeface. Like FF Milo, FF Milo Serif is a text face with the utmost legibility, perfect for setting newspapers and magazine copy. Although rooted with historical attributes it is truly a contemporary face. FF Milo Serif comes with SC, TF, OSF, LF as well as a wealth of ligatures. Like the Sans, FF Milo Serif is also a resilient grain!

FF Seria® Arabic, originally called Sada, by designer Pascal Zoghbi, is an Arabic type companion to FF Seria, designed in the nineties by Martin Majoor. The Arabic type family was part of the Typographic Matchmaking 01 project organised by the Khatt Foundation. Echo, which means “Sada” in Arabic, is the repetition of a sound caused by the reflection of sound waves from a surface. Accordingly, Sada/Seria Arabic is the echo of FF Seria. FF Seria Arabic is a young crispy type based on the Arabic Nasekh style. The Regular and Bold are text typefaces, the Light is both display and text type, while the Black is purely a display typeface.

Each FontFont release is newsworthy in its own right, but there is something especially momentous about this one: four brand new families, each one very different from the others; new styles for three of our most popular typefaces; and a dozen expertly crafted OpenType releases that breathe new life into FontFont classics.